Tennessee Arrests First Mother Under Its New Pregnancy Criminalization Law

Back in April I posted this article concerning the then proposed legislation.  But as the following  article states, ",,,the first case has nothing to do with illegal narcotics — and nothing actually to do with harm to anybody,,,."
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“This law was sold as if it were just about illegal narcotics. But sure enough, the first case has nothing to do with illegal narcotics — and nothing actually to do with harm to anybody,” Lynn Paltrow, the executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), one of the groups that’s firmly opposed to laws that criminalize drug use during pregnancy, told ThinkProgress. “There’s no injury. There’s just a positive drug test.”

The opposition to the new state law, which is the first of its kind in the country, isn’t driven solely by Paltrow’s group. Every major medical organization — including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Public Health Association — has come out against efforts to arrest pregnant women who use drugs. A diverse coalition of reproductive rights and criminal justice groups in Tennessee launched a huge campaign against the proposed legislation, called “Healthcare Not Handcuffs,” to point out that threatening women with criminal charges dissuades them from coming forward to get the medical help they need.

“These punitive measures are proven to be ineffective, and yet our state chooses to waste tax dollars locking up women instead of getting them the health care they need,” Rebecca Terrell, the chair of Healthy and Free Tennessee, one of the groups involved in the opposition campaign, told ThinkProgress via email. “We are already receiving reports of women seeking out non-licensed health providers to avoid having a medical record and risking arrest. This is extremely dangerous.”

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“This view of pregnant women essentially means that as soon as you’re carrying a fertilized egg, you’ve lost your medical privacy and your right to make medical decisions,” Paltrow pointed out. “But all matters concerning pregnancy are health care matters. Pregnancy, like other health issues, should be addressed through the public health system and not through the criminal punishment system or the civil child welfare system.”

Tennessee Arrests First Mother Under Its New Pregnancy Criminalization Law